COVID vaccines are working, data show. They’re designed to prevent death — not infection
Let’s cut to the chase: COVID-19 vaccines are doing exactly what they were designed to do, and that’s to prevent severe disease, including the need for hospitalization, and death — even in the delta variant’s presence.
Yet there remains the misconception that the shots were designed to prevent infections altogether, leading people to believe the vaccines aren’t working as they should when they learn about breakthrough infections among the vaccinated.
While data show the COVID-19 shots are preventing infections in many outbreak scenarios, the fact they are happening doesn’t suggest failure, experts say. Remember, the more people who get their shots, the more infections we will see among the vaccinated as they slowly make up more of the general population.
Put another way, what matters most is the proportion of breakthrough infections — defined as those that occur two weeks or more after complete vaccination — among the vaccinated, not the absolute number, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday during a COVID-19 briefing.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Sten Vermund of the Yale School of Public Health compared the vaccines to insect poison in an interview with The Washington Post.
Unlike those electrified tennis rackets that zap bugs to death upon contact, the shots are more similar to poisoned traps “into which a pest might fall, wriggle a bit, then perish.”
During its miserable demise, the coronavirus slowly loses its ability to replicate and cause sickness in people as the poison (vaccine) enters its veins, suggesting those who do get infected are less likely to become seriously ill, spread the virus to others — though still possible — and die from the disease.
Vaccine efficacy tells us about risk reduction, so people who get vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna shots benefit from about a 95% lower risk of developing COVID-19 once exposed compared to those who are not vaccinated. So no, it doesn’t mean vaccinated people have a 5% chance of getting COVID-19 or that 95% of people are protected from the disease.
It’s also important to note the clinical trials did not test whether the vaccines prevented infection in participants. It tested how well the vaccines prevented the development of symptom-causing disease.
“People should be reassured that if they are fully vaccinated that they are very likely, highly likely, to be protected against severe or critical illness, the kind of illness that would cause them to be hospitalized or killed by this virus,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Post. “Vaccines save your life.”
What data has shown so far
A recent case study highlighting hundreds of breakthrough infections from multiple large public events, both indoor and outdoor, in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, has gained lots of attention after experts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted the events changed their understanding of the coronavirus’ relationship with vaccinated people.
Officials said the outbreak spurred their decision to advise the vaccinated to wear masks while indoors after recommending they ditch them in May.
There were 469 COVID-19 cases identified in people who attended the events between July 3 and 17; of those, 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated people. Nearly all of them were infected with the highly contagious delta variant. And of particular concern, the amount of virus detected in people’s upper airways were similar among the infected, regardless of vaccination status.
However, just five of the infected people were hospitalized; four of them were fully vaccinated. Of the four vaccinated individuals who were hospitalized, two had medical conditions that put them at greater risk of serious illness, the CDC notes. No one died.
A separate study found that 189 of about 23,000 Stanford Health Care partially or fully vaccinated employees tested positive for the coronavirus. Meanwhile, about 660 of approximately 6,910 unvaccinated workers (10%) got infected.
The results show that COVID-19 vaccines not only prevented infections to a certain degree, but also protected against severe disease; 86% of breakthrough cases caused symptoms in people, but only two were hospitalized and none died.
The Stanford study was conducted before the delta variant was as widespread as it is now, but emerging evidence suggests the vaccines are still doing the same job — just to a lesser extent.
Turns out vaccinated people exposed to the delta variant are seven times less likely to develop symptoms than unvaccinated people, and 20 times less likely to die or be hospitalized, according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CNBC reported.
As of July 26, when more than 163 million people in the U.S. had been fully vaccinated, the CDC reported 6,587 people with breakthrough infections among those who were sick enough to die or be hospitalized.
A total of 1,293 of them have died. That’s less than 0.001% of those who had been fully vaccinated at the time.
However, the CDC’s numbers are an underestimate because as of May 1, the agency stopped tracking all reported vaccine breakthrough cases and started focusing on only hospitalized or fatal ones.
In other words, the public is only hearing about the worst cases that make up the minority, not the majority of the mild ones that result after vaccination.
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 12:54 PM with the headline "COVID vaccines are working, data show. They’re designed to prevent death — not infection."
